pandas df.loc[z,x]=y how to improve speed?

UPDATE: starting from Pandas 0.20.1 the .ix indexer is deprecated, in favor of the more strict .iloc and .loc indexers.

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@jezrael has provided an interesting comparison and i decided to repeat it using more indexing methods and against 10M rows DF (actually the size doesn't matter in this particular case):

setup:

In [15]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10**7, 5), columns=list('abcde'))

In [16]: df.info()
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 10000000 entries, 0 to 9999999
Data columns (total 5 columns):
a    float64
b    float64
c    float64
d    float64
e    float64
dtypes: float64(5)
memory usage: 381.5 MB

In [17]: df.shape
Out[17]: (10000000, 5)

Timing:

In [37]: %timeit df.loc[random.randint(0, 10**7), 'b']
1000 loops, best of 3: 502 µs per loop

In [38]: %timeit df.iloc[random.randint(0, 10**7), 1]
1000 loops, best of 3: 394 µs per loop

In [39]: %timeit df.at[random.randint(0, 10**7), 'b']
10000 loops, best of 3: 66.8 µs per loop

In [41]: %timeit df.iat[random.randint(0, 10**7), 1]
10000 loops, best of 3: 32.9 µs per loop

In [42]: %timeit df.ix[random.randint(0, 10**7), 'b']
10000 loops, best of 3: 64.8 µs per loop

In [43]: %timeit df.ix[random.randint(0, 10**7), 1]
1000 loops, best of 3: 503 µs per loop

Results as a bar plot:

Timing data as DF:

In [88]: r
Out[88]:
       method  timing
0         loc   502.0
1        iloc   394.0
2          at    66.8
3         iat    32.9
4    ix_label    64.8
5  ix_integer   503.0

In [89]: r.to_dict()
Out[89]:
{'method': {0: 'loc',
  1: 'iloc',
  2: 'at',
  3: 'iat',
  4: 'ix_label',
  5: 'ix_integer'},
 'timing': {0: 502.0,
  1: 394.0,
  2: 66.799999999999997,
  3: 32.899999999999999,
  4: 64.799999999999997,
  5: 503.0}}

Plotting

ax = sns.barplot(data=r, x='method', y='timing')
ax.tick_params(labelsize=16)
[ax.annotate(str(round(p.get_height(),2)), (p.get_x() + 0.2, p.get_height() + 5)) for p in ax.patches]
ax.set_xlabel('indexing method', size=20)
ax.set_ylabel('timing (microseconds)', size=20)

I always think at is the fastest, but not. ix is faster:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'A':[1,2,3],
                   'B':[4,5,6],
                   'C':[7,8,9],
                   'D':[1,3,5],
                   'E':[5,3,6],
                   'F':[7,4,3]})

print (df)
   A  B  C  D  E  F
0  1  4  7  1  5  7
1  2  5  8  3  3  4
2  3  6  9  5  6  3

print (df.at[2, 'B'])
6
print (df.ix[2, 'B'])
6
print (df.loc[2, 'B'])
6

In [77]: %timeit df.at[2, 'B']
10000 loops, best of 3: 44.6 µs per loop

In [78]: %timeit df.ix[2, 'B']
10000 loops, best of 3: 40.7 µs per loop

In [79]: %timeit df.loc[2, 'B']
1000 loops, best of 3: 681 µs per loop

EDIT:

I try MaxU df and differences are caused random.randint function:

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10**7, 5), columns=list('ABCDE'))


In [4]: %timeit (df.ix[2, 'B'])
The slowest run took 25.80 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
10000 loops, best of 3: 20.7 µs per loop

In [5]: %timeit (df.ix[random.randint(0, 10**7), 'B'])
The slowest run took 9.42 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
10000 loops, best of 3: 28 µs per loop